[TLDR (too long didn’t read): This Reader is about how science and intellectuals are either for or against the ruling paradigm and what implications this has for human rights to bring about a paradigmatic break. For a quick overview, just read the bolded text].
–Most societies marginalize their dissident intellectuals when they deviate from those in power and try desperately to act as human beings, as moral agents. (Noam Chomsky)
1. The current development paradigm is not content with sustaining dated theories. It uses said theories with the purpose of acquiring new powers, in particular by developing and pushing new technologies. (adapted from Yuval Harari)
2. Unfortunately, many intellectuals are accomplices of the power structure playing a functionary role given that they defend the purported ‘values of civilization’ –even when these often have brought about non-civilized effects such as misery, genocide, slavery and exploitation of peasants and workers in a grand scale. (Donaldo Macedo)*
*: How many intellectuals know of the existence of Dom Helder Camara, the Brazilian bishop that distinguished himself in the defense of those rendered poor in Brazil. Most of them would even have problems naming even one dissident in the many brutal tyrannies of Latin America. This reveals these intellectuals’ complicity with the distortion of the truth in the service of the dominant ideology.
3. In Orwell’s ‘1984’, society was conscious that it was being dominated. Today, we do not have that conscience of being dominated. The system only allows for ‘individualistic commercial differences’ in the population. We have gone from feeling ‘the duty of doing something’ to ‘actually doing it under the pressure (even if subliminally) applied to do it’. We live with the anguish of not always doing what we could/should do. We have lost the sense of against-whom-and-what we ought to act as a priority when standing for human rights (HR). (Byung-Chul Han)
Ideally, science should be presented not as a collection of algorithms to lead us to an illusory god-like status, but as a truly human pursuit (Colin Tudge)
4. Basically, “Men of science who have excessive faith in their theories or ideas are not only ill prepared for making discoveries; they also make very poor observations”, Claude Bernard wrote in 1865. “Of necessity, they observe with a preconceived idea of what they (can) see, their conclusions only confirming the theory they apply. In this way, they distort observation and often neglect very important facts, because they are actually furthering their preconceptions”. The risk clearly is to act like a mule (or an ostrich) and accepting what the prevailing ‘consensus’ dictates. (Louis Casado)
5. We also need to look at the economics and politics of science, both internal and external, take for instance, why are the best ideas often sidelined while others, that may in the end prove deeply pernicious, rise to prominence? Simply because they appeal for whatever reason to those rendered rich and powerful? (C. Tudge)
The ruling paradigm responds to the hegemonic vision of the West (North?). But unstoppable steps are being taken to replace it
6. The new paradigm we are trying to impose opposes the rationale of the dominant one without being unscientific about it; it attempts to dialogue with the hegemonic culture, but not bending and blending with its values and practices; it looks for agreement in diversity; it thus enriches the understanding of new realities faced by humanity in the realm of the global; it moves towards legitimating human and planetary rights in a sustained way. (Luis Weinstein)
Allow me a word on the paradigm of The Commons
7. There is nothing wrong with the idea of social commons. But are we not creating a new platform? Would this not depoliticize our HR struggle? Is the commons platform not following yet a new fashion? If so, why not channel the new fashion towards the existing HR platform?
8. I think a change of conception is needed regarding this paradigm.** It is actually the collective uprisings of people that must be considered the basis, the ‘mother’, the common denominator, the ‘grammar’ of all universally recognized commons. Ultimately, in the adverse current world order we live in, what is needed is the channeling of a collective will against-all-odds to defend all the different commons from a political perspective, publicly and privately. It is when the people feel compelled to join forces with their equals and to find a shared purpose to oppose that-unfair-world-order-that-hampers-their-access-to-the-commons that the true common is born –the aim being achieving the free use by the people of their respective commons (think natural resources, especially water, electricity, railroads, gas and mining under private control; social security; basic social services, especially universal free education and health care; the right to vote; indigenous people’s identities and rights; labor rights, especially unionizing …and so many other commons).
**: In the last few years, there have been many publications about ‘the commons’ and about a new solidary social economy. Unfortunately, in most cases, the latter are a myriad of only local initiatives, many of them in the food security, bartering, support for those rendered poor realms. This can be very positive and useful, but I would not dare calling it an alternative system insofar as big corporations continue calling the shots in so many commons. There simply is no structural change to be seen in the near future. (Francine Mestrum)
9. These big collective (basically anti-capitalist) actions have been historically infrequent lately, but they have indeed occurred in the last couple centuries of capitalist domination and we can learn from them. What is common in them is a close relationship among participants to undertake a collective endeavor united by a shared determination. The activists involved act as they become conscious of the power that collective action gives their movement.
10. In most cases, it is the state that centralizes and monopolizes the various commons in society (as per the above list). This gives the state the opportunity to call itself the representative of the citizens with this, in turn, legitimizing the state and its actions. The history of social security around the world shows that it has only advanced through strikes, work stoppages, street actions, insurrections and other organized workers tactics. Important is to mention that they have based these actions, not only as defending their inalienable rights as a class, but also as a denunciation of the greater benefits mostly some in society enjoy when the commons are monopolized by the state. This being so, through their struggles, workers reclaim public goods as their common goods since, historically, neoliberalism took over ‘the commons’ by, as we well know, taking over the public space. (Alvaro Garcia Linera)
11. Bottom line: No worldview explains everything so that we prioritize the things that need explaining most urgently. God was the most urgent issue in an age of faith. Science and technology are the most urgent things in an age of materialism. So, where must we place HR …? When something new becomes a greater priority, worldviews ought to change; the new reality will indeed care about how history will report it. (adapted from Deepak Chopra)
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
Your comments are welcome at schuftan@gmail.com
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